Thursday, July 19, 2018

Five Years After the Coup: The Liberation of Abdel Fattah Sisi

Five
years after the coup in which he overthrew President Muhammad Morsi, former
general and Minister of Defense Abdel Fattah Sisi has freed himself from all
formal restraints.This includes freedom
from the Egyptian constitution and his own supporters.That Sisi
would crush the Muslim Brotherhood represented by Morsi was a foregone
conclusion. That he would free himself from the liberal political figures who
served in the first government after the coup also seemed inevitable once they
argued for an early reconciliation between the Armed Forces and the doomed
Muslim Brotherhood. Unexpected is the
rapidity with which Sisi has freed himself from formal subordination to the
very institution that brought him to power: the Egyptian Armed Forces. There is a profound and enduring paradox of
late 20th century Egyptian politics at play here.Sisi has transformed what first looked to be
a collegial coup in which he was primus inter pares into one in which
his supremacy is unchallenged.This has
happened in the past, under Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Anwar Sadat, and Hosny Mubarak
although it usually took longer.The
paradox is that each time the military was weakened by an increasingly
personalized dictatorship it re-emerged in periods of unrest and contention to
re-assert its authority.

Just how Sisi has
gained his freedom requires a close look at Egyptian politics and especially at
the nearly continuous shifting of top personnel over the past five years.What has developed is simple to state: President
Sisi can now ignore the constitutional guarantees to the Armed Forces of its
autonomy as well as purely formal parliamentary constraints on the formation of
governments.Despite the waning of the
public cult of personality that initially accompanied the coup, Sisi has
increased his personal dominance over the regime.It may be time to think again about the role
of the Armed Forces in the political economy of Egypt and the nature of
Egyptian authoritarianism.

Any
account of contemporary Egyptian politics must reckon with the Supreme Council
of the Armed Forces.It was created in
1954 by Gamal Abdel Nasser.A regime of
colonels turned itself into a regime of self-promoted generals and SCAF
provided the armed forces with an institutional mechanism to influence the
government after the dissolution of the Revolutionary Command Council.Composed of 25 senior members of the air,
land, and naval branches, it could only meet in the presence and with the
approval of the president of the republic.It convened during the Suez Crisis (1956), the Egyptian intervention in
Yemen (1964-7), and during the prolonged period of conflicts punctuated by the
1967 and 1973 wars with Israel.SCAF
largely vanished from public view thereafter and played no public role even
during periods of high tension between the government and the armed
forces.It did not, for example,
intervene when Defense Minister Abd El-Halim Abu Ghazala abruptly resigned in
1989 after conflict with then President Hosni Mubarak.

SCAF
reappeared or was resurrected during the demonstrations against Mubarak in
early 2011.On February 10, 2011 SCAF
issued its first communiqué and pointedly noted that it affirmed the armed
forces’ support for the Egyptian people.As it became obvious that Minister of Defense Mohammad Tantawi chaired
its meetings in the absence of President Mubarak, Mubarak’s loss of support by
the army also became obvious.Mubarak
turned executive authority over to SCAF, and it also assumed legislative power
after the dissolution of the national assembly.SCAF remained intact even after
the election of Muhammad Morsi as president in 2012.A crisis in August 2012 led Morsi to replace
Tantawi with Sisi who was thus in place to lead the coup against Morsi in July
2013.

What
role SCAF would play in the wake of a military coup remained open.Unlike what occurred after Mubarak left
office, SCAF did not itself stand in for government.Instead the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour was sworn in as interim president. But was
SCAF unnecessary if the Armed Forces really controlled the post-coup
government?On February 25, 2014 Mansour
issued Law 20/2014 publicly structuring SCAF. This appears to have been the first time its
internal structure was made public and indeed may have been its first formal
internal structure.Although the
president of the republic had the right to call and attend meetings (and to
chair meetings he attended), he was not listed as a regular member.The regular president of SCAF is the Minister
of Defense for whom the Chief of Staff is the deputy.The members include the heads of the various
branches as well as the major staff divisions within the service (such as engineering,
legal, training, and fiscal organizations), and the leaders of the army
divisions (such as the Second and Third Field Armies) and the head of military
intelligence.Under other terms of the
decree, SCAF should meet regularly and requires a quorum.Formally, SCAF can make decisions by a
majority vote and the Minister of Defense transmits its decisions.In its very constitution SCAF embodies a
contradiction of authoritarian Egypt: it represents a completely hierarchical
institution but is formally empowered to make decisions democratically.Law 20/2014 specifically mandates SCAF to
approve any appointment of a minister of defense during the first two
presidential terms after the adoption of the 2014 constitution.The law thus implemented the constitutional
mandate of article 234 that, during these two initial presidential terms, the
Minister of Defense can only be appointed with the approval of SCAF.

This might all be
arcane minutiae had it not been the culmination of a prolonged and bruising
battle fought between 2011 and 2014 in which the Armed Forces insisted an
achieving just this privilege.Among the
most divisive and problematic issues of that period was the conflict over how
independent the armed forces would be from the executive or legislative
authorities. In an April 2012 interview with the New York Times, former
associate justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court Tahani Gebali asserted
that as early as May 2011 she was talking to SCAF about how to write a constitution
that would preserve the autonomy of the military.In November 2011, then Deputy Prime Minister
Ali Selmi issued a set of “supra-constitutional” principles to guide the
writing of the new constitution.As I noted
in a blog post at the time the Armed Forces had embraced principles
guaranteeing its nearly complete autonomy and the possibility that it would
choose its own Minister of Defense (http://nisralnasr.blogspot.com/2011/11/modest-constitutional-proposal-by.html).Shortly thereafter conflict over this issue
led to large scale street demonstrations and significant violence on Muhammad
Mahmoud Street just off Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo.

These violent
confrontations were a response to rising fears that the Armed Forces had no
intention of relinquishing power and contributed to the political polarization
that later enveloped Egypt.Military
autonomy was written into both the constitution drafted under by a committee
largely dominated by the Muslim Brothers in 2012 and the one written after Morsi’s
ouster.There was a widespread
presumption that in the post-coup government the constitutionally protected
position of Minister of Defense was even more potent than that of president. The Armed Forces had vigorously beaten back
all attempts since 2011 to subordinate the military to civilian authority in
any way.

Now we need to
look a bit more closely into the people and institutions engaged in re-making
Egyptian political life in the last five years.In mid-2012, after an assault on an army checkpoint in Sinai took more
than a dozen lives, then President Morsi ousted the Minister of Defense,
Mohammad Tantawi, and the Chief of Staff, Sami Anan. Morsi replaced Tantawi with Sisi and Sisi chose
General Sidki Sobhi (formerly head of the Third Field Army) to replace Anan as
chief of staff. Then Mahmoud Hegazi
became Director of Military Intelligence, the position from which Sisi had just
been plucked.Sobhi became Minister of Defense
in 2014 when Sisi ran for president, and Hegazi was appointed in his place as
Chief of Staff.This appeared to be an
elaborate but not terrifically important game of musical chairs in which a
small group of closely connected officers took control of the state by ousting
Morsi and then succeeding each other in positions of increasing importance.

It was therefore
surprising that at the end of October 2017 the music suddenly stopped and
Mahmoud Hegazy was dismissed as Chief of Staff and given a role with little
substance—as a presidential counselor.His ouster occurred after at least sixteen
policemen were killed during an operation in the Western Desert. In the months since Mahmoud Hegazy’s removal
there is reason to doubt that it was caused by the deaths on the Oases
Road.There have been many assaults on
ill-prepared and surprised soldiers and police in which no senior officer was removed.These tragic events occur sufficiently
frequently that they provide expeditious excuses, not amenable to public
debate, to sideline general officers.Mahmoud Hegazy was replaced by a general with whom he shares a name but
to whom he is unrelated: Muhammad Farid Hegazy.Farid Hegazy had earlier
benefited from Morsi’s ouster of Tantawi and Anan: he became Secretary General of
the Ministry of Defense and Secretary of SCAF under Law 20/2014.This was only the first of several personnel
changes in the Armed Forces.

In January 2018
Sisi removed Khaled Fawzy as head of the General Intelligence Directorate. Fawzy was chosen to head the National Security
Agency in 2013 and GID in late 2014.He
was therefore closely connected to the making of the 2013 coup.Abbas Kamel, who had served as Sisi’s own
chief of staff, temporarily replaced Fawzy.In June 2018 was Kamel installed as the permanent head of GID.Within a small coterie of high-ranking
generals Sisi had replaced one of his supporters with an even closer
confidante.

Before going
further I note two points that are crucial to understanding the changing
politics of military dictatorships.First, dictatorships (or authoritarian governments—the preferred moniker
in political science) change over time.Initial coalitions of army officers, economically powerful individuals,
and prominent social figures give way to new constellations of power and
authority.They can grow or shrink, use
violence more or less broadly, and coopt or exclude new social forces.Second, when the armed forces are the
institutional foundation of dictatorship, higher officers must maintain the
unity and integrity of the military as it is affected by the push and pull of
the political coalition that supports it. This has been a recurring theme of Egyptian
politics since the 1952 coup.Then-General
Muhammad Naguib and Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser disagreed about returning
governance to an elected civilian government. Having defeated Naguib and placed
him under house arrest for nearly 20 years, Nasser faced challenges from other
figures including his own Minister of Defense, Abdel Hakim Amir.Even now we do not know certainly whether
Amir voluntarily committed suicide or was summarily executed in the wake of the
catastrophic defeat in the 1967 war.Anwar
Sadat and Husny Mubarak both faced challenges from the security establishments but
each time the officer corps closed ranks behind a president who, himself, had
come from their ranks. Every Egyptian
leader overthrown by the Armed Forces beginning with King Farouk and including
Neguib and Morsi was at least formally associated with a policy of establishing
civilian control over the military.

The growth of Sisi’s
control over Egypt’s state machinery has been slow but sure.Immediately after the coup Sisi served as both
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense but members of the government
headed by Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi floated plans for economic reform and
national reconciliation between the army and the Muslim Brothers. Beblawi’s
government included several noted liberals including Mohammad El-Baradei,
Hossam Eissa, Ahmed Galal, and Ziad Bahaa El-Din.Baradei, a Nobel laureate work as Director General
of the International Atomic Energy Agency, resigned in August after the assaults
on demonstrators in front of Cairo University and the Raba’a Al-Adawiyyah
mosque took hundreds of lives. Bahaa
al-Din unsuccessfully proposed reconciliation between the government and its
opponents but the military was not interested.He quit the government in late January 2014. In February 2014 Beblawi suddenly resigned on
his own behalf and that of his government evidently at the insistence of
Sisi.The armed forces had begun to free
themselves from the fetters of constitutional government but Sisi still
appeared as primus inter pares.In
the interim between the coup which had suspended the Morsi-era constitution and
the election of Sisi as president under a new constitution, the new Egyptian
government (like others before it) maintained formal adherence to legality and
sought to present an air of elite continuity.

The first post-Beblawi Prime Minister, Ibrahim Mahlab, had been Housing Minister under Beblawi.Sherif Ismail remained as Petroleum Minister
andSisi briefly remained as Defense Minister
until he resigned to run for president.Mahlab
retained the former Minister of the Interior, Mohammed Ibrahim Moustafa, who
Morsi had initially appointed.The
debate about army autonomy ended on the army’s terms: the new constitution
stipulated that for the first two terms of an elected presidency the Defense
Minister had to be an army officer and could only be appointed with the
approval of SCAF.

Article
146 of the new constitution also gave the president the right to appoint a Prime
Minister.This was congruent with
longstanding Egyptian constitutional practice that the Prime Minister
represents the executive authority rather than a parliamentary majority.The only change was a stipulation that within
30 days of the decision on a new Prime Minister, Parliament must give the new
government a vote of confidence.Because
the Mahleb government was installed before the constitution was ratified his
government required no approval.

Mahlab’s
government ultimately collapsed in a flurry of revelations about corruption and
he was replaced by Sherif Ismail in September 2015.No parliament had yet been elected by the
installation of the Ismail’s first government and so it neither required nor
obtained parliamentary approval. Parliamentary elections were held later that
year and the first post-coup Parliament seated in early 2016. By mid-April 2016
Ismail’s government had obtained a vote of confidence from a sitting
parliament.Given the length of the
parliamentary interregnum the delay in approving a Prime Minister who had been
in office for six months might be considered irrelevant.Pro-Sisi “independent” members dominated
Parliament largely because the government seemed determined not to create a
political party with even nominal autonomy.The legislature was subservient to the executive and it had belatedly
undertaken its constitutionally necessary role.Unremarkably Ismail’s government also exhibited continuity with the
past.Many ministers remained at their
posts and, of course, Sobhi remained as the constitutionally protected Minister
of Defense.

Ismail’s
government was dissolved on June 7, 2018 and Mustafa Madbouli, who had replaced
Mahlab back in 2014 as Housing Minister, was asked to form a new government
which was duly sworn in on June 14. This government exhibited a surprising lack
of continuity in personnel and also remarkable disregard for the formalities of
the Egyptian constitution. The new government presented by Madbouli did not
include Sidki Sobhi as Minister of Defense.SCAF has never issued its official approval of his ouster or his replacement; it has said nothing. In his place as Minister of Defense was Muhammad Ahmed Zaki.Zaki had been head of the Republican Guard
from August 2012 until his appointment as Minister of Defense.The Republican Guard played an important role
in the 2013 coup if for no other reason than that it provided the security for
then President Muhammad Morsi, security that quickly turned into arrest.As of today, a month after the dissolution of
the Ismail cabinet Madbouli’s government has yet to acquire a vote of
confidence.The government has presented
its program and there is every reason to think that the majority will
approve.The “25/30” bloc (so named for
January 25, 2011 and June 30, 2013—the dates of mass protests that marked the
collapse of the Mubarak and Morsi governments) has shown vocal opposition.It is impossible to imagine that the bloc
will derail the process of approving the new government or force Sisi to pursue
other remedies under Article 146.

Article
146 was written by people who were thinking, perhaps naively, that future
parliaments would be chosen in competitive elections in which relatively strong
parties would be dominant voices.Thus
the article proposes that, in the absence of rapid ratification, the president
must turn to the party with a plurality and establish a government with
parliamentary approval in a total of 60 days.Failing that a new parliament must be elected.

Former
Minister of Defense Sobhi seemed to simply disappear.The contrast with President Morsi’s decision
to honor former Defense Minister Muhammad Tantawi with the Order of the Nile,
the country’s highest honor, on his ouster is sharp.Sami Anan, Chief of Staff, was awarded the
Order of the Republic.The circumstances
and negotiations around Tantawi’s and Anan’s retirement are opaque but Morsi
was signaling, possibly with the approval of Sisi and the rest of SCAF, that he
had no intention of significantly affecting the army’s own chain of command or
of subjecting its leaders to penalties for their actions after January 25,
2011.This would include hundreds of
deaths, thousands of injuries, and tens of thousands of detentions as well as
the infamous “virginity tests” to which women were subjected and that Sisi
later defended as necessary to maintain the army’s reputation.Despite Sobhi’s prominent role in
facilitating the ouster of Morsi and the emergence of the new regime he
received no official recognition for his service.

Morsi
had better reason than Sisi to fear the Egyptian Armed Forces and to try to
placate their leaders.His, and the
Egyptian people’s experience, with generals and former generals underlines the
obsessive secrecy with which the Armed Forces guards the secrecy of its
internal disagreements—existing or merely incipient.The consistent tendency of outsiders is to
underestimate both the existence of such conflicts among generals and their
ability to resolve them decisively and with force when necessary.

This
may have been true from the very beginning. Morsi became president by defeating
Ahmad Shafiq in the 2012 presidential election. One of Hosny Mubarak’s last official acts as
president was to appoint Shafiq as prime minister on January 29, 2011 in a vain
attempt to appease Egyptian demonstrators (and perhaps the Armed Forces).Shafiq was seen as the preferred candidate of
the military and the supporters of the old regime.So much so that if the 2012 legislature had
had its way officials of the old regime such as Shafiq would have been stripped
of the right to hold office in the new regime.Shafiq had been a fighter pilot and ultimately commanded the Air Force
before he resigned in 2002 to become Minister of Civil Aviation, a post he held
until his appointment as Prime Minister.On March 3, 2011 the SCAF, having replaced Mubarak as the executive
authority in Egypt, accepted Shafiq’s resignation.While it may very well be that the extent of
popular unrest made it impossible for the generals to keep a former colleague
in power, there are other possibilities to consider.As Minister of Civil Aviation, Shafiq was
very close to the burgeoning tourism industry which was the entering wedge of a
re-emerging large-scale private sector in Egypt.The growth of Egyptian tourism required
significant changes in the structure of the country’s air travel industry.This included the need to open both the
tourism and its infrastructure to foreign investment and competition.Shafiq’s years as a minister in the Mubarak
era required a far greater willingness to work with the emergent private sector
than has been true of other generals.It
is not possible to read off policy preferences from anyone’s in-laws but the
connections can be tantalizing.Shafiq’s
father-in-law, Tawfiq Abdel-fattah, an officer on the periphery of the group
that overthrew the monarchy, served as Minister of Social Affairs and Labor
under Nasser in 1958.Shafiq would, at
the least, have been more aware of the problems of organizing a command economy
than most officers in the armed forces.

Had
it not been for a decision by Sisi to transfer two small islands in the Red
Sea, Tiran and Sanafir, from Egyptian control to Saudi sovereignty this would
all be irrelevant.These two islands
dominate the entrance to the Red Sea and thus were once important strategic
sites for Egyptian attempts to limit sea traffic to the Israeli port of
Eilat.They consequently figure
prominently in regional strategic imagination and history.Under the terms of the Camp David Accords,
Israeli assent to the transfer was necessary as well as Saudi agreement to the
maintenance of the treaty itself.

Despite some
leaked tapes indicating that many Egyptian generals viewed Saudi Arabia and
other Arabian peninsular countries with disdain, President Sisi announced the
transfer during a visit by Saudi King Salman in April 2016.The economic rationale for the transfer—to construct
a $4 billion causeway between the Arabian and Sinai peninsulas—is far-fetched.

The
legal and historical decisions regarding the two islands are complex and
irrelevant here.What matters is that
there was significant political opposition in Egypt to the transfer of the
islands from the initial proposals in 2016 until it was accomplished in June
2017.Cession of the islands created
significant political and legal problems.The new constitution requires a referendum as well as parliamentary
agreement to transfer sovereignty over national territory.The claim by the two governments was that the
islands, despite being under Egyptian control, had really always been sovereign
territory of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and thus no referendum was
necessary.

Although
the islands were transferred (or returned) to Saudi sovereignty in June 2017,
there are reasons to believe that there were disagreements within the Armed
Forces as well as among the public at large.Sidki Sobhi, for example, does not appear to have endorsed decision in
public.

Six
months later, as 2017 came to an end, so did Sisi’s term as president and with
it the necessity to run for a second, and constitutionally final, term.In November Ahmad Shafiq announced his
decision to return to Egypt from the United Arab Emirates and contest the
presidency.Shafiq abruptly left Egypt
after losing the 2012 contest with Morsi at least partly under the threat of
criminal charges for corruption issued by Morsi’s government.He was living in the United Arab Emirates
when he announced his 2018 candidacy but shortly afterward unwillingly found
himself back in Egypt.Whether Shafiq
was deported by the Emirati authorities or kidnapped by Egyptian ones with
Emirati connivance remains unclear but shortly after his announced candidacy he
was being held effectively incommunicado.In early January 2018 Shafiq used his Twitter account to inform
Egyptians that he had thought better of running and no longer considered
himself a plausible candidate.In March
he endorsed Sisi.Could Shafiq have
mounted a serious opposition campaign?Would he have?We will never know
but as someone who had won more than 12 million votes in 2012 the government would
have been hard put to explain an outcome in which he won only a handful of
votes.

Shortly
thereafter, on January 20, 2018 Sami Anan announced that he would contest the presidential
election.He was arrested on January 23
and has been detained since.Anan’s ties
to the military establishment are more recent and more powerful than
Shafiq’s.Anan was Chief of Staff
between 2005 and August 2012 as well as Deputy Chairman of SCAF from its
revival in February 2011 through June 2012.The government wasted little time or effort on squashing Anan’s proposed
candidacy.Even though Morsi had
discharged him, Anan was arrested for violating military regulations. The Armed Forces claimed that he had ignored
the need to request and receive official permission to run for office as
required by a November 2011 decree placing all members of SCAF on military
status for life.He has also been accused
of the theft of sensitive military documents that may shed embarrassing light
on the current regime. The Central Bank of Egypt placed his assets and those of
his wife and daughters under its control.One of Anan’s campaign associates was former head of the Central
Auditing Organization, Hisham Geneina.Geneina had been dismissed from this government oversight body in early
2017 for charging governments before and after the coup with engaging in
widespread corruption.He has been
engaged in court hearings since in which he has been charged with providing
false information.Days after Anan was
arrested Geneina was assaulted in public view and left on the pavement for
nearly an hour before being taken to the hospital.Anan’s candidacy was over and Sisi won an
election in which a sole supporter posed as an opponent.Anan has been in custody ever since and over
the weekend of July 14 Reuters News announced that he had been transferred to
the intensive care unit of the armed forces hospital in the Cairo suburb of
Maadi.Anan would, of course, not be the
first detainee of the regime to die in custody but he would be the first
high-ranking former general to do so.

The
summary ouster of Sobhi from the Defense Ministry without public SCAF approval
and the installation of a new ministry without parliamentary approval thus
comes as the conclusion of a lengthy process of the consolidation of Sisi’s
personal control.Nor did Sisi soften
Sobhi’s ouster by awarding him a medal or other honor. But does this mean
Sisi’s control is complete?

It
may but there is one last recent news report to consider.Parliament, which has not yet been able to
ratify the new government, did manage to pass a law on July 3, 2018 regarding
SCAF.In a session from which the press
was barred Parliament passed a law giving the president of the republic the
right to award special (and unspecified) benefits to SCAF members now and in
the future.In addition, no SCAF members
can be held judicially accountable for acts committed between July 3, 2013 (the
date of the coup) and January 10, 2016 (the restoration of parliament).In addition, if traveling abroad the law
confers diplomatic status (and thus immunity) on SCAF members.The law gives the president significant
discretion in deciding its application.

Besides
Sisi’s dominance, what can we say about Egyptian politics now?There are three possible ways to interpret
recent events.One is that Sisi is
slowly undermining the military and necessarily preparing for the day when some
form of real civilian government is in place.Sisi himself has no particular reason to desire the successful
transition to a civilian democracy but, the argument would go, the writing is
on the wall. The emergence of
authoritarian civilian regimes from China to Turkey to Hungary implies that the
collapse of military rule need not mean the installation of successful
democracy, but the threat to armies is that new regimes may want to make the
military pay for years of violence and incompetence.The new law is meant to deny any future government
with the option of pursuing Army officers with criminal penalties for its worst
offenses.

A second
possibility is that the armed forces recognize, especially in the wake of
Sisi’s attack on Anan and Shafiq, their own vulnerability.On this reading, the armed forces accept
Sisi’s dominance and will refrain from insisting on their institutional
prerogatives as long as he rewards them.The most recent legislation would then mean that Sisi and the Armed
Forces have reached a truce and agreed to remove the weapon of criminal
prosecution either at home or abroad.The
generals have acquiesced in Sisi’s dominance but insist on some protection from
continued prosecution.

There is a last
and more ominous interpretation: Sisi has created an instrument that allows him
greater control over the Armed Forces. He now has a tool through which he can reward
and punish active members of the military as he sees fit.The Armed Forces have resisted providing any
executive with the tools to create or exploit their divisions.Officers have been rewarded with sinecures
after their service concluded and have generally been free from threats of
prosecution while on active duty.The
murderous assaults on Morsi supporters and especially the Muslim Brotherhood at
Rabi’a al-Adawiyah and in front of the Republican Guards headquarters in the
summer of 2013 in which more than a thousand people were killed were
exceptional.As the legal proceedings
against Anan and Shafiq show, the government has many ways to threaten generals
and former generals.On this view the
ouster of a defense minister, the installation of a new cabinet, and the
legislation safeguarding some but not necessarily all officers for their
participation in the events of 2013-2016 is an indication of the degree to which
Sisi has escaped the influence of his close allies as well as his enemies and
his lukewarm supporters.

What
does this mean for continued dominance of the military in Egypt’s
politics?Recently the well-known
novelist, political commentator, and former diplomat Ezzeddine Choukri Fishere
proposed that Egypt’s armed forces must, sooner or later, cede control to
civilians and accept that only by democratic means can Egypt be well
governed.The events of the last few
months show just how difficult any such political transformation will be.The Egyptian Armed Forces are a corporate
institution many of whose officers are connected by marriage, education, and a
network of social facilities including clubs and hospitals.Post-retirement careers include entering
private enterprise and civil administration.They will resist removal for obvious reasons of interest but they also
play significant roles in making many Egyptian enterprises and agencies work.Their initial education and training may be
for war but like most armies in the world today they rarely if ever engage in
combat.What studies we have of the
Egyptian military suggest that its strengths are engineering and logistics and
these are the skills that officers may have withdrawn during the Morsi
presidency when shortages in fuel, water, and food began to appear to a greater
degree than during the Mubarak years.Egypt has many other talented professionals with expertise in
engineering, construction, and logistics but for the moment army officers have
the set of informal ties as well as technical qualifications that are
especially important for large bureaucracies.

Once
again a general has emerged from a period of instability and managed, with the
support of a unified high command, to place himself at the center of political
power in Egypt.In place of the feverish
cult of personality that emerged in the wake of the coup, Sisi has instituted,
as did his predecessors, his own control over the executive and its
administrative arms.He has hollowed out
the legislature and military as independent sources of authority even though he
dominates them. There is little reason to doubt this will be successful in the
short run and little reason to doubt that it will fail over the longer
run.The bulwark of Egyptian regimes
whether new or old over the last half century has been the unity—not the
loyalty—of the Armed Forces.

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